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Said to be oldest continuously operating public space in Holland now a restaurant De Waag
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Doesburg became a city in 1237 and the historic old city is where our home exchange takes place. (Total number of inhabitants of Doesburg is a little less than 12,000). The old house we are living in is completely modernized and it has three floors plus a basement. We live only on the 1st and 2nd floors except for doing the laundry which is on the 3rd floor. The house is very comfortable but we old folks do have to be careful going up and down the old stairs which are very steep with a narrow tread. The living room, dining room, powder room and kitchen are on the first floor. The living room opens out to an outdoor space with a fish pond. The second floor has the master bedroom, large bath room, dressing room and office. The decor is completely modern. One of the many nice things about the house is its location - step out the door and you can walk to restaurants, shops and a supermarket. We have not used the bicycles but bicycles on the streets of old town are abundant; possibly there are more bikes than cars. And everything is incredibly clean and tidy as you can see from pictures that I have been posting on Picasa.
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How to Make Mustard
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One of Doesburg's main tourist attractions is its Mustard Factory and we paid them a visit. It is relatively small with a little gift shop and museum all about mustard. Unfortunately the signs were all in Dutch with no translations. However, we were able to talk with the tour guide in English and learned a lot about mustard making which is, actually, very simple. The factory has been making mustard in nearly the same way since the 1400's. There are only 4 or 5 ingredients - mustard seed, vinegar, sugar, salt and water. Sometimes seasonings are added too. They did not allow us into the actual mustard making and packaging area but they had a small working demo in the museum where the guide actually produced mustard and hand filled a few jars. They also make their own vinegar which is a simple vinegar made from sugar. The mustard seeds are fed into a mill stone for grinding; then cold vinegar, salt, sugar and water are added and out comes stone ground mustard. The mustard from this factory is sold locally in the supermarkets and other shops and shipped to other towns in Holland. It is very tasty!
We also visited a little museum about the history of Doesburg in an old building with 2 floors of exhibits and a basement with a small exhibit. We wished that we could have read all the signs on the display cases but, of course, they were in Dutch. We spoke with the volunteer in the gift shop and he spoke some English - in fact, he said that every Dutchman speaks some English. We have generally found this to be true in our experiences here. Anyhow, he told us about an old building that came down a few years ago and an archaeological dig took place before a new building was constructed. The basement of the museum had interesting artifacts that were collected from the dig including items dating back to the 600's.
Finally we went inside the Martinikerk so that John could see it and I could take some pictures (I saw it the other day but didn't take pictures). Especially poignant were the pictures taken right after the tower of the church was destroyed in 1945. Here is what it looked like.
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| Martinikerk - April 1945 |
As we were heading out our door yesterday (Saturday) we noticed that the carillon was playing a concert rather than one of the on-the-hour simple melodies that are automatic. So I aimed my iPod and took a short audio/video clip and put it on YouTube. It gives you an idea of what the carillon sounds like and you can see how close we are to the church as we are standing at our door. Turn up your volume and give it a listen:
We may or may not go to Delft on Sunday, depending on how John feels as he may be coming down with a cold.
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